A tribar – what is that? With this concept physicist Roger Penrose points to objects and figures which you can draw but not build. There are false links in tribars. There are contradictory and impossible elements. In many of his works the graphic artist Escher shows tribars [...] Money, for example, is a tribar, as euros and dollars are digital states which are moving and jumping with our hopes and fears, according to changes in our mindscape.
(Leena Krohn)

"Mau Mau veterans sue Britain"

"Do the Kenyan librarians see their role as informing Kenyan people as well as participants at the WSF about the reality and history of Mau Mau".

I am not a Kenyan librarian, so the question is not for me to answer. That is why I have put Shiraz question about the Mau Mau veterans who are now sueing Britain [2] between quotation marks.

I intend to use Shiraz' question as a pretext to think aloud - organise my own thoughts - about some general issues.

---

The answer is included in Shiraz' question. Obviously, the librarians of a world society should help humankind to settle the accounts with its past and present. [3]

A world society has not yet come into existence. But it might have become possible in our days. The internet is one of its potential institutions.

The internet is an outgrowth on the library.[4] Internet and library are one and the same. The internet is the library becoming a true world library.

In old Alexandria, already, they almost had a world library. Which means that "globalisation" started a long time ago.

Is Alexandria East or West? North or South? The answer is that Alexandria is everywhere. It is in Bush.[5] It is in Mao's "Contradictions".[6] It is in Maulana's "Mesnavi".[7]

The world society is present in you and me. The world's society and the world's library are very close to each others. Library and society are mutually dependent on each other. The mere existence of the library proves that Mrs Thatcher was wrong in saying that 'there is
no such thing as society'.

---

How about the wealth of nations and the misery of the peoples? What can a librarian do?

She/he can join the efforts to create a world society at the World Social Forum.

At the World Social Forum, we (we, the peoples) try to organise the world's public finances in a social and democratic way. World Public Finances is perhaps best described as a Social Democratic idea[8] ?)

In our modern world, the public sphere is the sphere of the society that is accessible to the reading public. It is the sphere of democratic deliberation.

'Finances' refers to a certain abstract perspective on the economy, using money as its measure. 'Public finances' is a concept that belongs to the political economy, the common (social) economic sphere of the society.

The neoliberal economists, bankers and politicians, who still dominate the politics and the economy, do not want any public discussion and deliberation about the public finances of society, not to speak about the public finances of the whole world.

But why should the librarians follow the Bushes, Blairs and Berlusconis instead of participating, along with other professional groups, in the Open Conspiracy [9] for a world society?

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Notes:

(The purpose of these notes is to provide yet one illustration to the thesis about the identical nature of the internet and the library - all the references are actually found on the net. )

[1] "E-LIS is an open access archive for scientific or technical documents, published or unpublished, on Librarianship, Information Science and Technology, and related areas" (http://eprints.rclis.org/).

[2] See, for instance, Joyce Mulama: "The "Mzungu" Called to Account, Decades After Colonial Abuses", Inter Press Service (IPS), 6 October 2006 (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35021)

[3] See, for instance: Richard Drayton: "The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation. Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial history", a comment in the Guardian, August 20, 2005 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5267073-103677,00.html).

[4] "Polemos panton men pater esti,", wrote Heraclitus, strife is the father of all things. Thus somebody might object that the internet is an outgrowth of the military-industrial complex of the USA, and, more in particular, of the efforts of American scientists and engineers to guarantee the coninuation of the control, command and communication (CCC) of the American soldiers even during and after an atomic war. - Would such CCC be anything else than a futile effort to save "the library"?

[5] We all live today under the conditions of the pax americana, which only is an extension of the pax romana which, in turn, was built on the ruins of the library of Alexandria.

[6] Mao Zedong, in his essay "On Contradiction", tried to explain parts of the philosophical heritage from Alexandria to his fellow countrymen. This text is available at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

[7] This refers to "The Masnavi I Ma'navi"
by Maulana Jalalu-'d-din Muhammad Rumi
Abridged and Translated by E.H. Whinfield (1898),
(http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/masnavi/). The Wikipedia
has an article on this Persian classic, and its English translations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masnavi). - A nice little selection of poetry from the Masnavi is found in Aida Foroutan's blog at Yahoo, see
Aida Foroutan

[8] On Social Democracy, see Howard Richards: Dilemmas of Social Democracies (http://www.howardri.org/dilemmas.html). A printed version is available as The Dilemmas of Social Democracies: Overcoming Obstacles to a More Just World, by
Howard Richards and Joanna Swanger (http://www.lexingtonbooks.com/).
On World Public Finances, see http://www.cttcampaigns.info/otrosistema/wpfblog

[9] "The Open Conspiracy" is an idea that has been developed by, among others, the British author H.G.Wells in a pamphlet with the same title, which is available at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201081.txt. - The Wikipedia has an article about H.G.Wells and a separate entry about "The Open Conspiracy".

The finance-related peace prize

The choice of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 is a natural continuation of the vaguely progressive line that Norwegian Nobel Committee is following since many years.

Still it is news of some sort that the peace prize is being awarded to a bank, that is Grameen Bank, and to its founder Mohammed Yunus. Would it not have been more appropriate to give them the Nobel prize in economics?

It certainly would. We can congratulate dr Yunus and Grameen nevertheless.

Some seem to start from the assumption that Grameen is taking Capitalism to the poor. That is a somewhat superficial analysis. Surely, Capitalism has been plaguing the poor long before the coming of the microfinance industry.

In the context of the grotesque financial system (or lack of system) that the whole world suffers under today, Grameen is a wonderfully exceptional capitalist business bank.

The efforts by Grameen to combine the microcredits with the microchips are extremely interesting. The mobile phones and/or the computers (which can be one and the same) are replacing the money, or rather, they are the new money. Will the world's finances become more transparent and public? Could the banks become more like the libraries - institutions that serve the citizens with information and information technology?

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Former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari had been one of the favourite candidates of the mainstream press for the Nobel Peace prize 2006. Here in Finland, however, many citizens were drawing a sigh of relief when the winners were announced. While dr Yunus is an example of a banker and an economist who became a true social democrat, former president of the republic Ahtisaari is yet one social democrat turned into a true capitalist.

I am probably not alone with this opinion. In the webforum of the daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, one of the first comments to the topic "Where you disappointed on behalf of Ahtisaari?" , said: "This man supported the war in Iraq, and only two days ago it became known that more than 600.000 Iraqis have died because of the aggression of the USA".

Montesquieu, Estates and Liberty

In a dictionary on the web, I read this passage about the political
views of Montesquieu:

"Montesquieu's most radical work divided French society into three classes
(or trias politica, a term he coined): the monarchy, the aristocracy, and
the commons. Montesquieu saw two types of powers existing: the sovereign
and the administrative. The administrative powers were the legislative,
the executive, and the judiciary. These powers were to be divided up among
the three classes, which he referred to as Estates, so that each would
have a power over the other. This was radical because it completely
eliminated the clergy from the estates and erased any last vestige of a
feudalistic structure."
(http://dictionary.laborlawtalk.com/Charles_de_Secondat%2C_Baron_de_Montesquieu)

This formulates an opinion on Montesquieu's work that I do not share.
According to my reading of Montesquieu, the idea that he wanted the state
powers "to be divided up among the three classes, which he referred to as
Estates", is simply mistaken.

Montesquieu writes:

"Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free.
Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in
these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of
power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power
is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Is it
not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?
To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that
power should be a check to power. A government may be so constituted, as
no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige
him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits."
(The Spirit of Laws, book XI, ch 4)

So M. is of the opinion that it is necessary, "from the very
nature of things", that power should check power. This, rather than any
anticlericalism, is the "radicalism" of Montesquieu.

The root of the confusion lies, I believe, in the historical tradition of
the more or less periodical assemblies of the Estates,
Etats généraux , of France. Assemblies of the Estates, or similar, have played
significant, but not decisive roles in various Kingdoms. They might have
allowed the King to share his absolute power with his people, at least
symbolically, and they also provided the King and his people with an
important channel of communication (a "public sphere", albeit one of a
temporary and limited kind).

But Montesquieu's thinking about how "power should be a check to power" is
inspired by the history of the English Revolutions, not by the tradition
of the Etats Généraux. To Montesquieu, the political theorist and
philosopher, the political sphere is autonomous visavi the economical
classes of the society. Indeed, his political theory is an attempt at
establishing, theoretically and practically, a political system that is
characterised by liberty.

Montesquieu is not radical, but moderate: "Political liberty is to be
found only in moderate governments".

What a "world government" has to be like

What worries me is this: I see the WSF as being the embryo to a "world
government", but I do not yet see that this is widely understood.

A "world government" has to be very different from the governments of
national states. This is an important part of the "Another" in our slogan
"Another world is possible".

The difference is not in ethical values, this is not an ethical issue. It
is a question of structure. A great illustration is the example of the
military apparatus, as H.G.Wells clearly understands in his pamphlet from
the 20ies (The Open Conspiracy). A "world government" does not - never will - build on military might!

A "world government" is an informational government. It has to be a
"self-government", it must be cybernetical in its nature -- like the
internet, of course. And the internet is, basically, a new kind of
library. It is an outgrowth of our literacy.

Literacy is our predicament. There is no escape from it.

The principle of "world government" is identical with the principle of the
modern public library: to make all information available without delay to
all the people.

The WSF must follow that principle, that is its only chance. Or, more to
the point, a "world government" must be like that. Like a modern public
library.